And Tear Us Apart Again
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: The sequel to 'These Strings That Bind' - a collection of vignettes which document C/B's past, present and future, complete with a little angst, a little fluff, a little lovin' and a little laughter. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
1. Captivated

_******This little oeuvre was born from my deep and abiding love for Marvel, too much Tobey Maguire and Jet's fantastic song 'Hold On'. I hope you enjoy it.  
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**Captivated**

'_Everybody needs a hero – people line up for them, cheer for them, scream their names __–__ and years later they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours, just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on a second longer.'_  
– May Parker, Spider-Man 2

'_I am vindicated  
I am selfish  
I am wrong  
I am right  
I swear I'm right  
I swear I knew it all along  
And I am flawed_  
_But I am cleaning up so well  
I am seeing in me now  
The things you swore you saw yourself.'_  
– Vindicated, Dashboard Confessional.

Underneath it all, we all want the same thing: we want a hero. We want Bruce Wayne, or Peter Parker – we want someone to make us marvel at miracles and to catch us when we fall. We want that magic that dwells in greyness, the flash of red in the sky; we want to believe that if one good person knows how to save a life, then we'll know how to do it too.

In reality, it goes even deeper than that. We don't just want to see it, we want to be _it_: the one who'll always be taken because we're the one who'll hurt the most, the driving force behind the epic deeds. We want to be the one he would kick and scream and die for, because what we want is to be the reason – the be-all and end-all of absolutely everything.

This is what Blair Waldorf is to Chuck Bass: she is everything. She is the woman who helps him on with his mask in the morning and reminds him of who he really is at night. She is Rachel Dawes, Mary Jane Watson, Lois Lane – she is utter redemption. Without her, he has no power – no glory – no friends. Without her, he can no longer be a hero.

And sure, the black hat sometimes fits better than the white one. Sure, sometimes he feels like giving up and breaking down and just buckling beneath the pressure. Sure, sometimes the world crashes down and he's left among the flames but sure enough, there she is, every time – picking her way through the rubble with her stiletto heels in one hand and her heart in the other.

She believes in him, and with that?

He can do anything.

_Fin._


	2. How Could You Be

**How Could You Be**

'_If you could go back and change how things happened, would you do it? Would sacrifice it all for the perfect life?_'

Blair blinks, and she's at the Sheppard wedding, Chuck looking at her sardonically over the rim of his scotch glass. In those bygone days, she never noticed the colour of his eyes – dark hazel, not black – and now she does. She sees something golden in them, something that she isn't meant to see yet; something that perhaps she was never meant to see at all.

"A poorly lit video of you and me _in flagrante delicto_ would last longer," he comments drily when he notices her staring. "I know some people."

"Of course you do, Chuck – exactly the same way I know some ruthless contract killers and your dealer's cell." She smiles sweetly and he smirks back, but this is still too easy and too good. Blair is here for a purpose, she knows that now: she's here to find Nate before he and Serena go into the bar, and to do something – anything – to stop the inevitable.

"He's not worth you, you know."

Blair turns and finds Chuck still looking at her; she'd forgotten he used to cut his hair like that. "Who's not worth me?" She asks, genuinely bemused. In her mind, it's still 2010, she still semi-lives in a suite at the Empire with the boy (man) sitting opposite her and she still wonders what crazy, fucked up mischance threw them together.

Chuck's hazel-cat eyes are closed, but his hands shift in the manner of a righteous preacher instructing his flock. "Nate. You deserve better than someone who'll play fight with Serena but is afraid to muss your dress."

She looks at him hard; at his closed eyes, at the purple suit which would look so gaudy on anyone but him. She doesn't know how she didn't realise – she's wearing plum coloured silk with a matching headband, and they're like it was meant to be. He'll ask her to dance later, she remembers, and as one hand grips her waist she'll casually notice the similarity of the colours and make a flippant remark. He will say nothing.

And suddenly, she doesn't even care about changing history.

"Chuck Bass," she says quietly, examining his lovely, hard-angled face as she has so many times before. "No matter what you think, you're a good person – and there are people out there who love you."

It's natural – to her, even if it's not to him yet – so she leans forward and places one swift, burning kiss on his tense mouth before he can even open his eyes and see her. She's gone before he knows it, gliding across the dance floor to converse with her mother, and later he'll chalk it up to scotch and insomnia when Serena and Nate fuck on a barstool and he can't forget that sweet, wildfire flavour on his lips. Until the limo, of course – even drunk and exhausted and in awe of a Blair who is fearless beneath the blinding lights he'll remember her taste.

_Fin._


	3. Taint

**_This is sort of a 'what if?' for 2x07 in regards to what if Chuck and Vanessa had seen Blair eavesdropping._**

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**Taint**

There's a darkness in her eyes as she whips back around the door frame, a terrible darkness of shock and rejection. Vanessa's head whips around at Blair's sharp intake of breath, wrenching her hand away from Chuck's and flinching at Blair's sharp gasp of pain. She knows that darkness – knows it from Dan and Serena and a love that died because it had no air to breathe – and there's a terrible twisting in her gut: _Blair Waldorf has feelings? Blair Waldorf cares for something other than herself?_

Chuck's jaw clenches as the red dress – _his_ red dress, a dress that once upon a time he imagined taking off her very, _very_ slowly – disappears, gliding back to the party with its poker face on. He's broken the rules, he realises. What do they do? They fuck and snarl. What do they do? They don't hold hands.

What has he just done?

"Oh God." Vanessa bends at the knees, dropping down beside him. The electricity that seemed oh so present in the room before is now dead, burned to dust and scattered on the floor. The girl from Brooklyn looks up at Chuck with horribly guilty green eyes, her innate sense of good (which neither he nor Blair seem to possess) kicking in and sending that dark head into her hands.

"Oh God," she says again. "I didn't – I mean I shouldn't – what was I thinking?" She raises her head and looks at him, gaze suddenly glittering hard like green glass. "What am I, Blair Waldorf's dustcart? The girl who has to sweep up after her bloody trail of exes? First Nate, now you..." Her head resumes company with her hands. "But of course, as everyone from Serena to Gossip Girl is keen to point out, you two are so _different_. And you start talking to me after I speak to her...of course, of course."

"Vanessa –"

"Don't." The word is tinged with acid. "I'm assuming you're a good enough person to have called this off before I got hurt, but you also seem to be a blind one. Really –" And up comes that head again, proud as a don. "I'm assuming this one follows the pattern of every other sting...but of course you're both sick, so it'll have some gross _Cruel Intentions_ caveat in place. You have to humiliate me; she'll give up the goods – oh my God." She sees his expressions. "That's it, isn't it? And you don't actually see what she's doing, do you?"

"You're rambling," he points out, stereotypically cold because he's confused.

"Don't bullshit me." The red painted mouth is drawn into a truly sincere sneer – from Vanessa Abrams, should-have-been-summer-of-lovechild. "Everyone knows what happened in the Hamptons, even me, and everyone knows what happens after. She wants to get even with me, sure, but not as much as she wants you – for some reason I can't fathom, obviously."

"Obviously."

"Go back to the party," she advises. "Find her. Talk to her. Who knows?" She rises from his side, hanging in the doorway to deliver a last few words of sage wisdom. "Blair Waldorf might be a better person if she's screwing you rather than screwing people over."

She leaves like a husky wraith in her pale dress, and Chuck sits on the bed and bores a hole in the wall with his stare.

_Fin._


	4. In Which I Never Stopped Believing

**_Very AU, and shamelessly Glee inspired. Though I don't watch the show, I stumbled across a C/B video which used this song and fell in love. I now fear what will happen if I do watch Glee...  
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**In Which I Never Stopped Believing I Would Find You**

_'__Just a small town girl  
Living in a lonely world  
She took the midnight train going anywhere  
Just a city boy  
Born and raised in south Detroit  
He took the midnight train going anywhere  
A singer in a smoky room  
A smell of wine and cheap perfume  
For a smile they can share the night  
It goes on and on and on and on and on.'_  
– Don't Stop Believing, Journey.

Her life is in tatters, and snowflakes coat her eyelashes as she stands on the platform, waiting for the midnight train with only one battered case clasped in her small hand. Her fingers are blue with cold, and her trembling lips shade purple; there's not much left in her now.

He's on top of the world and still underneath it, a thickly expensive coat keeping the cold out of his body but not his soul. His eyes are hard chips of glass as he waits for the midnight train, hands empty but pockets full. His hands are encased in fine leather; his fingers are restless.

She boards a long way down, hurrying away from the bustle of late night shoppers climbing on at one end. Her part of the train seems to be reserved for the lower classes, and it's where she feels safest. She has a seat to herself, and the air thrums with the smell of cheap perfume of whores and even cheaper wine.

First he follows the crowds, and then becomes more and more irritated as seats are taken up by lovers and mothers and fathers and families who talk and laugh and mock them with their happiness. He heads toward the rear of the train, ignoring the smells of wine and cheap perfume which assault him as he goes.

She sees him first – more out of place than even she, a darkly handsome, erudite figure who makes her stomach twist before she has even seen his face. Involuntarily, she smiles.

Even as he decides to turn back, he sees her smile. Those eyes – glorious in their darkness; captivating as black stars; heartbreaking. He moves toward her.

She watches as he comes forward, lifting her cold hand from her lap with one of his warm ones. She is Blair Waldorf, barely even old enough to drive but without family or friends to take her in during a snowstorm.

He kisses the pale, icy skin, feeling the blood rush to his lips and turn his heart over in his chest. He is Chuck Bass, the world's youngest CEO with money to burn that still doesn't seem to make him any happier.

She'll put her head on his shoulder as they speed through the night, certain and sure of herself for the first time in her life. He'll inhale the scent of her hair, unsurprised when they arrive in New York as easily as if it was meant to be. Her gentle kisses, lighter than rain, will remind him of who he is. He'll make her someone; give her a part of himself for when she has nothing else to hold on to.

That's how you find your heart when you never set out to seek it.

_Fin._


	5. The Holy Trinity

_**Can I just point everyone in the direction of http : // www . facebook . com / group. php?gid = 329179802088#! / group . php?gid = 301026997576 &ref = mf (without the spaces, of course). Want to fight for Chair? Here's how to do it.**_

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**The Holy Trinity**

Blair loses the first of three caveats on the hottest day of the year, wearing a polka dot bikini and white-rimmed sunglasses. She's covered in suntan oil, just letting herself bake, and Chuck is admiring the glisten and ripple of golden skin every time she moves. Nate and Serena are shopping – Serena hung onto Blair's arm and begged her to come, then switched her attention to Nate when Blair refused. Nate laughed and agreed immediately, and off they went – leaving Blair and Chuck to be Blair and Chuck in the sunshine, aged thirteen.

You're hot, he tells her.

Funny, she mocks, adjusting her sunglasses.

In retaliation he lets a drop of icy scotch hit the smooth skin around her navel, and she shrieks and flies at him. Their lips collide, and she tastes angry and hungry and like coconut from the drink in her hand. The offending crystal tumbler falls from his fingers and smashes on the tiles, and they kiss and kiss until they remember who and where they are, and Blair pushes Chuck in the pool for his trouble.

The second caveat is dealt with as the temperatures plummet one year later. It's the coldest day yet and they're both dead drunk, lying on the floor in Chuck's suite at The Palace and trying to find patterns in the elegant stucco on the ceiling. Nate and Serena are gone again, of course, only this time Serena is somewhere across the river with her latest hustler and Nate is bolstering the Captain's business assets by bolstering his own biceps. Blair briefly wonders what she's doing here.

Unicorn, he comments. It would be different with me.

Dragon, she replies. No it wouldn't.

It's almost as if they slip towards each other, falling asleep on the thick carpet in a hot, tangled mess, his face buried in the crook of her shoulder. They haven't had sex and this time they haven't even kissed, but Blair is content to let Chuck wind himself around her like he belongs there. It's a stick it to Nate, she thinks as she nods off. It's a stick it to Nate for wanting to stick it to Serena, Chuck thinks as he follows.

They both destroy the third caveat aged sixteen, when the night is neither hot nor cold but crackles with electricity. I don't want to talk about it, she says, wrapped up like a Christmas present with a bow to match. I just want to escape. I want to escape with you is what she really means, but Lord knows she'll never say it – not even as she gets up on stage and throws in the towel for Nate's benefit and her headband for her own, pouting and swaying and driving Chuck wild because this last caveat has to and will go with him, even if it kills her.

I don't want to hurt you, he says.

I want you to, she answers.

They're in genuine trouble now, rocking and moaning and gasping like they should, fireworks shooting off and sparking and hissing inside them. The world is a cataclysm, they both decide, a storm they're at the eye of. This is better somehow than golden sunshine or unforgiving ice, better than the dazzling Serena or the handsome Nate. This is them, Blair and Chuck, and Lord only knows how Blair and Chuck like to fuck.

_Fin._


	6. I Want Candy

_**Clandestine Chair is sometimes better than even Classic Chair...and as you might have guessed, I paid a brief visit to season one this evening, and I have to say that season three (and two, to some extent - a very small one) really does pale in comparison. That make out session to Sea Wolf is probably one of the hottest things I've ever seen.  
Enjoy.**_

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**I Want Candy  
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_**~#~**_

"_But you live just down the street!_"  
"_I wasn't home._"_  
_– Nate Archibald & Blair Waldorf – Hi, Society

_**~#~**_

"I've never done this before."

"Of course you haven't."

"I though it would be disgusting."

"Breakfast on Blair Waldorf? Never."

"Uh..._there_."

Chuck smirks into Blair's stomach, his tongue snaking out to trace a line in the syrup surrounding her navel. Her back is arched like a bow and she's sticky and sweating, stark naked with hair mussed and chest heaving.

He thinks she looks beautiful.

Blair's eyes roll back in her head. "Why didn't we do this sooner?"

He chuckles darkly. "Greedy, aren't we? Well, _ma cherie_, it was probably because we were too busy working through every other sexual taboo in that sweet, twisted little head of yours."

"Some of them were your idea."

"But some of them weren't."

One hand descends, digging into that thick mess of dark hair and forcing his head up so their eyes meet, hungry and hungrier.

"Kiss me," she commands, then shivers as he complies. "Not there."

His mouth blazes a trail upwards before meeting hers, tangling together in a delectable mixture of mutual ferocity and insistence. She pulls hard on his lip, tries to bite.

"Bitch."

She does bite then, scraping her teeth across the flesh and licking the light wound with a quick flick of darting tongue. He shudders.

"Much as I hate to say this...don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Clothes. Clothes!"

Blair is on autopilot now, snappy and anxious as she scrabbles on the floor, sifting through piles of his and hers and only managing to come up with a bra and a pair of boxer briefs.

Chuck arches an eyebrow. "Are those mine?"

"You're taking me to La Perla later," she replies. "You rip it, you pay for it."

"By that definition, can I buy you underwear solely to rip off?" He leans back on the pillows, enjoying the view. "Though I have to say, you with no underwear? Hot. You in _my _underwear? Hotter."

She smiles in spite of herself, pulling on a green coat over a caramel-coloured sweater and jeans. "Shut up."

"You'll be back." It's a statement of fact, not a question.

She leans in - close, but not close enough.

"I'm on top next time," she says, then bites that sore lip by way of a goodbye.

Five minutes later, Chuck's text arrives.

_U didnt gt brekfst. Brunch?_

_I neva eat btwn meals._

_Ths time u wll._

_Cocky, r we?_

_4 U? N E time._

_Fin.  
_


	7. The Sub Scientist

**_Hands up who wants to bitch slap Chuck Bass?  
This, of course, was written after the heartbreaking motherchucker that was Inglorious Bassterds. I knew it was coming, I was waiting for it to come but it still hurt...all the same, I can't wait to see how things pan out. Ed and Leighton deserve friggin' awards._**

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**The Sub-Scientist**

He makes introductions at Columbia, calls up contacts and calls in favours; he adds her name to sacred lists and pays her bills at stores and sends flowers to the penthouse without a card so she'll think Dorota bought them. He takes care of her tuition, her dorm rent, wrangles her invitations to the best parties and events and tries to ignore the omnipresent 'plus one'.

She laughs with the dean at Columbia, shakes hands with new people and marvels at her good fortune; she winks at the bouncer who always treats her like a VIP and smiles when 'it's already been taken care of'. She sends off checks and is surprised when they get lost, surprised at all her scholarships, surprised when the invites arrive with her name on the envelope. Blair is becoming Blair Waldorf, an unbearable being of light and substance, stripped of the darkness which has plagued her for so long.

Stripped of love.

Chuck Bass, king of the world – and yet still a little boy wishing for any kind of homecoming – sits high on his horse in his penthouse at the Empire with a forgotten lace teddy in one hand, breathing in the perfume which still clings to the sheer fabric and wishing he didn't have to make love to her from a distance.

They'll meet again one day, of course – aged forty and thirty nine – and screw in the bathroom off a ballroom just to taste each other's sweat. His crow's feet are delicate, lacelike monuments to care and concentration; hers are non-existent (a little sweetener from ex-husband number four). The clothes will come off and they'll just be two horny teenagers again, messing around in the backseat of a limo to make the white hot lights of ecstasy instead of crimson cloudbursts of broken hearts.

_Fin._


	8. Indecent Remembrance

**_Damn you, Chuck Bass, because I can totally see this happening.  
Enjoy._**

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**Indecent Remembrance**

'_I'll never be the same  
If we ever meet again  
Won't let you get away  
If we ever meet again._'  
– If We Ever Meet Again, Timbaland & Katy Perry.

"I am _begging_ you."

He'd forgotten how beautiful her eyes were. So dark – like black onyx, like star sapphires.

Like stars.

"I'll do anything."

Businessman Chuck Bass isn't used to once-twice-thrice-four-times-a-lady married Blair Waldorf-Strom-Grayling-van Zundert-Fox begging him for things. He thinks he likes it.

He thinks he missed it.

"If you take his company, then our life...our life is gone."

_Our life is gone_, he muses. Should hers be too – crushed by the iron fist of ambition?

If only she'd look at him that way she used to.

"Indecent Proposal," he says aloud, interrupting her.

"What?"

He almost laughs. She seems so perfect, so polished, so secure and pulled together in her way of life – and yet she says 'what' instead of 'pardon' or 'excuse me', and shatters the illusion of hauteur like sugar-spun glass.

"It's a film," he replies. "A film about one person who will do something for another person in exchange for one night with them." His eyes meet hers across the desk; something stirs in those starry depths. "One night only, Blair."

Her jaw tautens imperceptibly (to anyone but him, of course). "The thing with an indecent proposal, _Bass_ – you have to know what you're asking."

"I know." _I know_, he thinks. _I've known since we were eleven and you tried to do a handstand and ended up with your skirt over your head, pink silk knickers on show for all the world to see._

"You don't." One hand – the one with the wedding ring – reaches up, removes the clasp that's holding up her hair. It tumbles down in thick, unchanging waves, and the scent engulfs him. "It can't just be one night with us, Chuck – it never has been."

His mouth is suddenly dry. "That's all I have to give."

What would seem an insult to some hangs in the air between them: all I can give is love, as love is all I have. Do you love him? I love you. I love you so much, it consumes me. I love you too. Love me? Always. All I ever did was love you.

"It's all I have to give," she repeats, and it's true – even after three failed marriages and three dozen CEOs biting the dust, the boy who stood package laden and sweaty palmed on the pavement stills belong hand-in-hand with the girl who took off her clothes and kissed her boyfriend's best friend just to prove she could.

_Fin._


	9. Failing Like Flying

**_This has been hanging around in my Document Manager for ages, so I thought I might as well upload it for your perusal.  
Enjoy._**

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**Failing Like Flying**

In a way, Chuck Bass had always been setting himself up to fail – if one can call giving in to the inevitable failing, of course. From almost the day of his birth, his plans had been destined to come to nothing. On that day, he had been torn from the arms of his mother and hustled away, handed dispassionately to the only woman who was able to take him. Eleanor (feeling sympathy for the poor, snuffling, motherless bundle, and not a little distaste for its father) had placed him in the room with the blue walls, in her daughter's large crib. Blair (just starting to crawl, though even this she accomplished with dignity) had taken a prompt look at the new arrival, closed her eyes and gone straight back to sleep.

This did not bode well for Chuck, and nor did Blair's apparent disinterest in trying to smother him (as Serena was wont to do whenever Lily came to visit). By the time he went back to his father and a procession of nannies, he was already doomed.

Thereafter, Chuck seemed to exist as a substitute: when Nate didn't want to watch _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ for the millionth time, Chuck would be the one who dutifully fetched the video. When Nate was closing up the yacht, Chuck would accompany Blair to various societal functions. The pair – dark and dark, old money and new – always caused quite a stir, and a strange kinship began to exist between them:

The chase twisted things a little. Now it wasn't only Chuck feeling as if he was fighting an oncoming tide as he watched those lips turn up from across the room. Secretly, silently, she had taught him every way to win her – from her passion for classic Hollywood to the slide of silk over silk every time she crossed her legs. Sometimes, he berated the day Eleanor had deposited him with her much more cognizant daughter, and the way that every day since he had fought to catch up. He berated a lot of things.

But when the day came, however, he knew how to woo and how to win. Macaroons, those stockings, peonies – and the truth.

Why bother with success when failure won you everything?

_Fin._


	10. Bad Romance

**_Bizarrely enough, this started its life as an angsty vignette based on Scouting For Girls' song 'This Ain't A Love Song, This Is Goodbye', but with a little help from some period drama I'm busy enjoying it became fairytale-esque fluff. Oh well - I hope you enjoy it just the same!  
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**Bad Romance**

They will become legend in the way that all such oddities do – in the way that you read another version of a familiar fairytale simply to discover its new ending. Theirs is another version of that selfsame, familiar fairytale: a fairytale where the princess takes it upon herself to choose, and chooses right; in the way that not all princes and knights and witches and dragons are exactly what they pretend to be. There is a price to pay for each stolen moment of sunshine, a price upon the head of every player.

There is a chessboard, and there is the game.

Perhaps it is a cautionary tale – look before you leap, and before you lie. Perhaps it is a book which is abandoned by the child because it does not follow the correct pattern, and then picked up again by the adult who has come to realise that life does not always run by rote. Children cannot see into treacherous minds and empty marriages, and this is why they dream.

She dreamed, so often and for so long, of princes and palaces and no prices to pay. She dreamed of true love and trust and kinship and friendship and all we are taught is virtuous. She kept fairytales, dozens of them, arranged in neatly bound rows by order of preference. She had them read aloud until she could read, and then read them herself; she lost herself in a perfect world where truth and solidarity and kindness and gentility are all that is expected of princesses (and where princesses are creatures who would never be ruthless and cruel in order to get what they want).

He can't remember the tales, only the characters, and only where he fitted in: vizier, magician, jester, advisor – the princess too far beyond his reach for any sleight of hand. He is sometimes the villain, sneaking and sly, wanting what he can't have but coveting it nonetheless. He read those stories like they were dirty; like they were the magazines on the top shelf (out of his reach like the princess, and yet somehow so much more accessible). He hid the books, burnt them, never gave them back and let his heart grow harder than frost.

They're having one of those moments that doesn't happen in fairytales because a kiss to awaken a beauty is the last event that has any meaning before those glossy, golden letters spell 'The End'. No one talks about the kiss which awakens the dragon, the temptress, the kiss which brings them here, looking at one another underneath the sheets like they're those children who threw the books away.

"We're not a love story, are we?" She asks quietly, her tone not cutting but somehow peaceful; at peace with the question.

"No," he replies truthfully, watching her watching him watching her. "But then, none of the best stories ever are."

_Fin._


	11. Just Another Word I Never Learned

**Just Another Word I Never Learned To Pronounce  
**

Graduation is...awkward, to say the least. He says he's here for Nate and that thought makes up about one five hundredth of his reasoning, but the fact that he's here at all forces her mind back to the last such event they shared: blue caps, green caps, secrets and lies,_ Chuck Bass: coward_ and_ Blair Waldorf: weakling._ She even took care to dress differently today - in a drop-waisted thirties dress and pale gold headband concealed beneath her cap and gown - but that strange, soft, arrogant and overall blindingly proud smirk quickly makes her feel eighteen and sweaty palmed once again.

He always did know which buttons to push.

"Bass."

"Waldorf."

"I haven't seen you in a while."

"Have you been looking?"

They realise the irony of the situation is a second or two later, but by then Blair's not the only one feeling too young; feeling her pride smart because the other looks too controlled, too well polished and too well rounded alone.

"You came for Nate, I assume. Where's William?" She hates William.

"Urging on our boy." He knows she does. "You look beautiful, by the way."

"Thank you."

"How's Columbia treated you?"

She wriggles contentedly, and it's all too easy to see the gloss of queenship making her glow like a setting sun, a fiery queen of ice in a gown of slate blue. "Well. I read that piece about you in the New York Times - very impressive, Bass. I am truly honoured to know the 'teenage tycoon of NYC'."

"It's funny."

"What?"

"The reporter who interviewed me used to work in the society section. He asked me if I was still dating the pretty girl who stamped on my foot when he was writing her up for 'A Night Out With...'."

She gives a light laugh, obviously trying to diffuse the tension of the situation - the fact that everyone else saw what they couldn't. "Were we really that obvious?"

"I think I was." His gaze is familiar, intense; burning into hers. "Sixteen year old boys are never very good at hiding their jealousy."

There is a long moment between them, where it feels almost as if two timelines are running parallel: _ChuckandBlair_ and _Chuck_ and _Blair_, two separate and disparate entities with a world of judgement between them. She knows they've been too long apart when just being near one another causes the clocks to run backwards and her _breathing_ - she expected breathing to get harder, but nothing like this. They need to be together always, always in the same room to remind the other what they hate and loathe and so that the games and the lies and the blackmail can seem more concrete than they do on one sunny morning.

Her phone chirps, and they both look down.

"It's Serena. I should -"

"I should probably -"

"I'll make sure to -"

"Goodbye, Blair." Chuck does what he promised himself he wouldn't and takes her hand, one brief press of skin against his own to accompany a slight smile. "Good luck.

_**~#~**_

"Rebecca J. Waddell, bachelor of science, majoring in neurobiology and behaviour."

A slightly plump girl steps onto the stage, her beam wider and whiter than a fjord, red curls making a valiant attempt to escape her cap.

"Christopher M. Wakefield, bachelor of the arts, majoring in drama and theatre arts."

A slightly husky boy, round shouldered, follows Rebecca to collect his diploma.

Chuck wonders (and knows) what he's still doing here now that 'Nathaniel W. Archibald, bachelor of arts, majoring in economics' has come and gone. He knows it's probably detrimental to his health to have waited all this time just to hear her name, just to watch her smile and to know that, even from beyond the grave of their romance, he still helped to make it happen and her happy - although the room is too hot, too crowded and he wishes he could loosen his tie. He can't because, conversely, he wants her to be proud of him: her 'friend' Chuck, sitting in the fourth row back and hoping that her even glancing his way at the paramount of her triumph will mean something.

"Blair C. Waldorf, bachelor of the arts, majoring in art history and this year's winner of the G.K. Wilke award for academic excellence."

Blair swallows back bile - an unfamiliar taste, nowadays - steps out onto the stage, her heart thud-thud-thudding in her mouth. The lights blind her, the applause is deafening: she can hear a whistle which must surely come from Nate, Serena's cry of 'you did it, B!', her mother and her father and Cyrus and Roman all whooping in perfect harmony, her friends catcalling, her minions cheering; and almost subconsciously, she looks out into the auditorium and into the sea of faces. It's not her fault he's suddenly the only person in the room, that smirk of catlike smugness just for her. It's not her fault he's the one who got her here, the one who knew her better than herself and knew that this was what she wanted.

It's her turn to throw caution to the wind, and to hijack a speech to make a statement.

"Every year, another class leaves Columbia," says Blair Waldorf, valedictorian and feared dictator. "And every year, another class will begin their studies within these hallowed halls. We've grown here; we've become the people we were meant to be. Columbia has given us the chance to change and adapt for the better." They make eye contact and she wonders how he did it, because right now her mouth is just so dry. "We've made mistakes. We've made deals we didn't mean to, and we've told lies we shouldn't have. But this matriculation represents not only the end of our time here, but at new start." He knows now; she swallows. "We go out into the world reshaped by our experiences, and my most important experience of Columbia has taught me to never stop fighting for the best in all I do." He smiles, and she tries to breathe. "We may have been tested and tried, and sometimes we may not feel that we can do it; but the inevitability of falling is that we'll learn to fly - eventually."

That gets a laugh, and the applause echoes once again as she climbs down from the stage, diploma clasped tightly in one hand.

It'll be difficult, after that. At all the parties that follow, Blair's remarks will range from a clipped 'This is Chuck Bass' to an altogether drunken 'This is Charles, and I _looove_ him. He likes it when I'm a bitch."

Chuck just takes her hand and smirks.

_Fin._


	12. Turn The Lights On, Carry Me Home

**Turn The Lights On, Carry Me Home**

You're offering me a choice that has no let-out clause, no chance for escape. When you say if I don't meet you tomorrow, you're closing your heart to me what you're really saying is 'break your own heart, or let me break it for you'. We'll never be safe? I'll never be safe. I am _never_ safe with you. The problem is, I don't know whether I was all that safe to begin with. Harder, before you, maybe, and colder; a little darker, a little shallower and a little closer to the surface. I understood the theory of the things you said and did late at night but I never knew - I never really understood, before you.

No one can make me lose control like you do.

But I don't know whether that's enough. Everything has a price, every second that we waste being happy. Kismet is telling us to scheme, and cheat, and lie, and I don't quite know if I can live through losing another little piece of the ugly, shattered thing lodged in my chest.

I don't know if I can live through losing you again.

And the worse thing is, you know; you read me like an open book, something by Edgar Allan Poe with guilty hearts and ravens. As much as I want to be the spunky, sparkly, sassy heroine, I know I'm not - but then, you're no white knight. We're villains, you and I, ready to force a war or win one and twist and smash and burn. It makes me sick that I crave it; that being who I am (and am not) and being with you are so inexorably intertwined. There never was a chance for escape, no let-out clause - only us, darker than rainbows and somehow still light.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, a sinner and a saint; your hell and your dream. I'm an ice white moon who still somehow seems to sizzle. I want so much for there to be a happy ending for us...

But we'll never be safe.

_Fin._


	13. Snow White

_**A YouTube vidder**** called CosmicTeardust recently vidded a beautiful audio manip video about Blair's bulimia, and how Chuck helped her through it, and that video just about broke my heart. I feel like you've only ever seen Blair's bulimia at a glance or in Chuck's POV from me, so I thought I'd write something about them, but more specifically about her and her disorder.  
Enjoy.**_

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**Snow White  
**

She regards the spotless toilet bowl with something like apathy. It's not an escape for her now, not a way to flush away broken dreams along with the mess; it's a dull ache, and a need, and a necessity because it numbs the pain which is clawing her up from the inside and making her wish that she were sleeping deep beneath the ground, enshrined in a glass coffin so the world would look kindly on Blair Waldorf - poor, spurned Blair Waldorf - and her wasted beauty. She wishes every slice of neatly arranged apple in her salad had been laced with arsenic, and strychnine, and hemlock, and just about every other toxic thing to lay her out like a martyr and a lamb to the slaughter.

So why isn't the glass world in the mirror so forgiving?

She brushes back her hair and the sweat from her brow; she cleans her teeth. She applies a fresh coat of lipstick and smiles - oh, so dazzling and oh, so worthless - into the mirror. She can see another face masking hers, a face which is glowing and golden and full of life, and she pounds the mirror with her fist until it turns bloody just so Serena will go away, fade away, far away...

**_~#~_**

"Jesus Christ, Waldorf."

It's the first thing she hears when she comes round, and her head is in the lap of the last person she would've expected. She passed out, she supposes, through lack of food or lack of caring or something which has no bearing on the situation now. He's dressed with his usual flamboyance, pale blue today, and her scarlet streaked hand has left great smears of red all over the expensive material.

"Oscar de la Renta?" She inquires.

"Correct."

She doesn't know where he got the tweezers from but suddenly there's a firebrand in her hand, burning and blazing as he removes tiny splinters and larger shards, occasionally stopping to douse the tweezers in his tumbler of scotch and go at it with renewed vigour. His face is intent, eyes glowing with something Blair can't recognise (because Chuck Bass doesn't _care_ - she may be the only female alive he actually considers a friend, but that still doesn't mean that he _cares_ about her. Why would he? She smashed the mirror to make him stop, make it stop; make it all stop, stop spinning around and around her like leaves in a whirlpool in a river).

"You're lucky you didn't hit any tendons." He pours the remain of the scotch over her hand, and she hisses in pain. He sighs, and - not a little reluctantly - removes his dark blue bow tie, wrapping it clumsily around her small hand and securing it with a surprisingly neat knot. She smiles slightly as she realises how they must look: reeking of alcohol, soaked in water and blood.

"It was food poisoning," he affirms, though in his eyes she sees the truth, shining like a half hidden accusation.

"Food poisoning, yes. I've never been one for apples."

_Fin._


	14. Acariciada Por El Sol

**_Chuck never fails to make me laugh out loud, and this quote set me wondering...so here comes one rated M. The title means 'sun-kissed'.  
Enjoy._**

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**Acariciada Por El Sol**

_**~#~**_

'_If you needed to mark your territory so badly, Nathaniel, maybe you should just pee on her_.'  
– Chuck Bass, Southern Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

_**~#~**_

He would've marked his territory that first day in Tuscany, dabbing a touch of cologne onto the back of one ankle while she slept. Later on, when her legs were locked around his waist and she was moaning and raking her nails in perfect, parallel lines down his back (because even partway through dying over and over and _over_, she is an utter perfectionist), he would've been able to smell himself on her. He would've been Chuck Bass: her disease, her sickness, the first guy she screwed in a shower and who laughed with her when they smashed the damn thing to pieces. She would've sighed when he massaged shampoo into her long hair, sighed when he parted her legs (because, you know, on the beach wasn't enough, and neither was in the swimming pool...or on the bed...or on the floor...or bent attractively over the kitchen counter).

But he didn't go to Tuscany, didn't nearly drown in her and drown himself diving too deep to taste her under the water. He amused himself with Amelia, who was as she should have been, and then went on a short tour of the world by way of spending the summer: Italians and Germans and Spaniards galore while she sunbathed topless on a beach in France and he tried not to look at the accompanying picture.

He tried to ignore her when she came back, tried to ignore the tan which suddenly made her legs look eight feet long and the carefully tended and now gold streaked hair (their hair had once been of a colour – clever). He tried to ignore the bastard who fawned on her (she never had much talent for choosing swains) and would've probably have kissed her shoes if commanded. There was a night, once, when _he_ had been the one to kiss her feet (and up her calf, and along her thigh, and in other places until she had rolled her eyes and parted her crimson lips and said, '_that's nice...are you going to fuck me now?_').

And then he saw the pin, and he couldn't keep his face stitched on.

He would've bitten her, licked her, scratched her, slapped her and rubbed himself all over her; anything to mark his territory. Instead he left her in the garden, and no amount of sticky, sweaty, Blair-filled dreams and days and nights of hard-ons could stop him wondering why, if a picture was worth a thousand words, other people couldn't see his name written all over her body, from the crown of her head to her neat little feet.

He should've just peed on her.

_Fin._


	15. I Suffer Well

**_The idea for this piece came from me pondering today the things we say to people who are on a verge in their lives: to stop them, or let them go, or give them a push in the right direction. In essence, the words always seem to be the same - I think you know what they are.  
Now, a gentle reprimand. I love writing and sharing my work for the sheer pleasure I get from opening up a character and giving their insides a good ol' stir, but the number of reviews I've been getting recently is verging on pitiful (*cough* five *cough cough*), and to be honest it's really getting me down. If you don't like what I write, make a request! If you do, take two minutes out of the 1440 in your day and friggin' well tell me! The reason True North and my other long fics are as long as they are is because the love of my reviewers put a pen in my hand and words in the characters' mouths - don't be a stranger, 'kay?  
Enjoy.  
_**

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**I Suffer Well  
**

"Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it, _stop it_!"

Perfume bottles smash, their contents soaking into the carpet like blood seeping from a wound; the air is thick with a dozen different scents, blurring and blending like the essences of life. Pearls drip from chains like oversized teardrops and ornaments smash. Dresses and skirts and blouses and shoes and purses and headbands fly through the air in a multi-coloured tangle, streaks of emerald and ochre and midnight and jet against the fiery crimson of the pain, and of the passion. This is the curse they have created, Blair thinks, and she can feel her heart breaking – just like porcelain – inside her chest.

She locked the door but he follows her in, nails bloody from clawing at the catch. "Blair, listen to me. Blair, please –"

"Don't you _speak_ to me!" She screeches, and remembers that banshees and furies and goddesses of vengeance were women scorned too, and she wants to claw at her own face just so that something will eclipse this great, engulfing pain. "Don't you _look_ at me! Get out! _Get out_!"

"No. No!" He's pulling at her, pulling at her clothes, pulling her towards him with the inevitably of his larger body against her smaller one. She screams, yells, rakes her nails across his skin, kicks and punches and slaps and bites at every part she can reach. This is no play violence, meant to reprimand or to arouse; she thinks she is dying, and she means to drag him to hell along with her. They can burn together there, as they always have – water and oil, black and white.

"Let go of me!"

"No! Blair, listen to me: I love you."

"No! Stop it!" His hands are gripping her wrists and she snarls, a million years away from the coiffed and polished Blair Waldorf whom everyone loves to hate. She's a whore, a virgin, an animal and a demon forged together into one woman, one woman and one girl who wants to break her best friend in the world and watch him bleed to death on the ruined carpet. She won't let him take her, not now, not with his eyes and his lies. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"I love you."

"Stop it! Stop it!" He still has her wrists so she kicks out at him with her pointed shoes, banging and banging her little feet over and over into his calf and crushing his toes beneath her sharp heels.

"Jenny –"

"Don't you say her name! Don't you say it to me!"

"And I did nothing, because I love _you_!"

"Liar! Liar!" The tears are weakness and acid, both together, making her martyr and traitor and victim and victor in the same fell swoop and in the eyes of nobody. "I hate you! You think that if you keep saying that, I won't? I hate you! I wish you'd never been born! I wish you were dead! I wish I'd never met you! Liar, bastard, traitor, motherfucking _liar_!"

His mouth is set in a tight line as he tries to restrain her, but he still repeats those same words: "I love you."

She laughs suddenly, wildly, and as his hands automatically slacken in surprise she gets in one cruel swipe which splits his lip. The blood drips down, red and red and redder; Chuck's eyes remain impassive, fixed on hers.

"I love you."

"No. No. No." Why won't the tears stop? "No. Stop saying that. _Stop saying that_!"

He ignores her, face as expressionless as if he were checking his stock portfolio. "I love you, Blair Waldorf. I loved you when you gave me your virginity, I loved you when you risked everything to save me. I loved you when you spat at me, and I loved you when you did everything in your power not to love me too. I loved you at school, and in the dark, and even dancing with you at some goddamned societal circus I still loved you! I love you now, and I always will."

"No. _No_." How did it get to be this way, rocking in his arms in amongst the wreckage of her life? Why did it have to be this way, sinking to her knees with him still holding onto her, burying her face in his shirtfront and soaking it with her tears? She has held back these tears before – when Nate said he didn't love her, when Chuck told her she was just a game, when Jack put his filthy mouth on hers and the truth hit her like a train thundering through a tunnel. She held back tears at NYU, at Columbia; at social events and galas and at cotillion, when Nate was so wrong, and that summer, when it was so right she had wanted to cry with happiness even as the white hot burst of ecstasy painted her sky black and her forced her eyes back into her head.

Chuck presses his cheek to the top of her head, feeling her fingers tremble helplessly as he inhales the familiar perfume. There are little pieces of bodies all over this room, little half lives of all the Chuck and Blairs that could have been.

"I hate you," she says helplessly, because all the erasers in the world couldn't clean up this mess they've made of themselves.

"I love you," he replies, because it's the truth.

_Fin._


	16. The Wicker Woman

**The Wicker Woman**

_Alice in Wonderland_. The book lies between her hands, a present for the child she now knows they'll never have. It'll join the others – _Gulliver's Travels_, _Snow White and Rose Red_, _Charlotte's Web_ – on a prettily carved and painted bookshelf that will never suffer careless knocks or scratches to mar its glossy finish. They deserve each other, she thinks, book and shelf, both doomed to forever remain unopened or half empty; doomed forever to a pretense of something they're not.

Every time is the last time, because you should love the one you're with – you deserve each other. Every starburst of agonising ecstasy is the last, ever moan and purr and sigh the last to leave her lips. Every blouse torn or skirt ripped is the last, and every bruise on her collar bone is the last time his lips will ever touch her skin. It's ridiculous, when she thinks about it: filling your empty life with another empty person is hardly likely to make you feel any more fulfilled. How can she help it, though, when the world is peopled with shades of grey and white?

'You deserve each other': that's what they all say when they eventually find out. Her on top, her underneath, her looking out the window because she can't even bear to look him in the face; just 'you deserve each other'. Surely, she thinks, there must be other words with which to condemn her – but it appears there aren't.

"You deserve each other!"

Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, she thinks she sees him – because they deserve each other, after all, and that must be for the myriad of sins they've committed both apart and together over the years. High cheekbones, straight nose, full mouth, dark hair and eyes, skin once upon a time golden and glowing but now drawn and pale and white. The emptiness shows on her two faces, those two that deserve each other and yet scare one another to death. Looking at their faces in the mirror makes her see her own death upon her; it makes her feel hollow inside, a red balloon ready to burst like a caveat against happiness.

So she follows the routine of the one she's with – because, of course, they deserve each other. Society wife, belle of the ball, always cool and collected and poised; always careful. Not careful with him, though: behind barely closed doors and in populated bathrooms, biting her lip to hold back the inevitable scream.

And they're inevitable.

There's a convex of skin at her waist now, its apex just above her navel. Carrying high means a girl, Lily says, fondly smiling at Serena and ignoring the fact that the dates for this new carelessness born of deserving each other are all wrong. When her own daughter inquires delicately, one hand covers the slight bump and a dark head shakes. They're both too damned stubborn, Serena thinks, and that's why they deserve each other.

_Grounds for divorce: infidelity of husband._

_Grounds for divorce: infidelity of wife._

They share the same attorney, and that's when he finds out: dumbstruck in the waiting room at the elegantly coiffed woman in the lavender dress and high heels. For her part, she simply arches an eyebrow, a 'you didn't ask' to his obvious question. It's not theirs, she decides, but hers, and her and this baby deserve each other...right up until the point its father stalks her across half the city just to hear its heartbeat. He's dumbstruck, amazed, and though she only coolly raises her brows once again, he takes her hand; her heart starts to race. Two heartbeats fill the room, and she can only wish that hers were the steady one.

Two hours later, with the sweat cooling on their backs and the crescent of their baby nestled between them, it's become eminently clear why they deserve each other.

_Fin._


	17. Rave

**_Just because, in amongst all the drama, we sometimes forget that they are dirty, scandalous and filthy rich.  
Enjoy._**

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**Rave**

'_Blood sticks  
Sweat drips  
Break the lock if it don't fit  
A kick in the teeth is good for some  
A kiss with a fist is better then none._'  
– Kiss With A Fist, Florence + The Machine.

It's a dance they've practised since aged ten and nine, maybe younger; in black and white rooms with black and white people, le Comte et la Marquise. Some like to dance 'til they're dead and some like to drink 'til they're sober, but they spend the time repeating the same steps over and over once again. Practice makes perfect, in sex or success, and you have to keep at it until you can do it with your eyes closed and enjoy the moment.

Dark eyes flicking sideways.

Red lips curling up.

Identical expressions of smugness.

She doesn't dance around in provocative clothing and he doesn't use cheesy pick up lines. She doesn't drop her purse to have it picked up and he doesn't send drinks with dirty names. They're old school, old Hollywood: Humphrey and Lauren or Douglas and Mary. She drinks gin martinis because that's as it should be and occasionally plucks the cigarette from his mouth for a drag. He drinks scotch and watches her breath steam up the glass.

They're so like twins sometimes that it's uncanny; an intent can be telegraphed across the room, through the black and white pairs of dancers, running like blue fire across the city's skyline. Manhattan sticks out of the Hudson River like a middle finger, and they love the fact that it's their town, their place to shine.

Black velvet.

Champagne.

Black ice.

Love is like oxygen, and it's an oxygen they need to taint.

_Fin._


	18. In Your Eyes

****

_I watched the end of 2x13 on a whim, and it inspired this - just the image of Chuck sitting on Blair's bed, waiting, because he knows she's going to come for him. This is in her POV._

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In Your Eyes

At first glance, your eyes are like mine. They're black and cold and hard; they're full of secrets you're not willing to share and promises you're not willing to make. Not willing is not the same as not ready, but even you know that you most probably never will be – ready, that is. Good things come in threes, but good is a concept you've learnt to pass up on the hope of and instead devote yourself to pleasure and to the general sense of wellbeing that accompanies it. Good is a concept you've never had much of, and opening the curtains and letting in any of the light offered would be too much like breaking taboo; it's a difference too hard for you to bear. In the dark, you can't see your own face in the mirror. In the dark, you can't see your eyes.

In your eyes, I see emptiness.

You've had too much of everything and yet little enough of anything. You have what others want, not what they take for granted. You are sick in your soul, so deep down that it reaches out and burns me - it cuts you open so that I can see your heart beating: a twisted, crippled thing with no name branded on it but your own. All that exists other than that are the scars where you've seared off each and every name that has even the slenderest of rights to be there.

In your eyes, I see loss.

You're so heavy in my arms when I hold you, the weight of all that sorrow and that sickly soul weighing you down like a lead heart with a leaden heartbeat - not a golden god, but not a flesh and blood man either. I want to hold you tighter than I ever could, to squeeze the parasite inside you into letting me go and letting me have you. My heart is open, blood pouring over us and drenching our bodies in a macabre, crimson fountain, and you let me hang on to you like the jaws of life because you're too afraid to err one way or another. It doesn't matter if that pale, shrinking, tortured thing in your chest is too damaged to speak the words that would make it bloom, the way my heart blooms when you say my name. I know the truth. I've always known it.

In your eyes, I see it.

_"Blair."_

_"Shhh. Don't say anything."_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"Close your eyes..."_

I cry as you fall asleep, because you've cut me irrevocably open and my heart is dying, dying over and over again as I keep on bleeding this empty, lost, perfect love.

_Fin._


	19. Diana

_**This is shamelessly, hedonistically and sickeningly inspired by BimboBoop's**__** exceedingly good fic 'How You Know'. It is serious awesome sauce, and you should go and read it if you know what's good for you.  
If you've read 'These Strings That Bind', this chapter somewhat carries on from the chapter entitled 'Pieces' - however, you in no way need to read any of my previous fics to understand what's going on. 'Diana' takes place in the summer after Serena left town, in the Hamptons.  
Enjoy.**_

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**Diana**

'_So glide away on soapy heels_  
_And promise not to promise anymore_  
_And if you come around again_  
_Then I will take_  
_Then I will take_  
_The chain from off the door._'  
– The Chain, Ingrid Michaelson.

It had all seemed like such a good idea at the time. The giggling, the shrieking as the girls ran down the beach, sand crunching beneath the heels of Manolos and Ferragamos which were quickly discarded; the slosh of liquid as it dripped from glasses and ran down hands and blended seamlessly into the sea, a midnight concoction of gin and brine as the foam rose and caught toes, fingers, long hair and sparkled on long, tinted eyelashes. Blair was first into the sea as she was first into everything, and her white skin glowed silver and was dappled with the spray.

"Dude," Nate said uncomfortably, shucking his own shoes and flexing his shoulders as if the muscles felt uncomfortable in their places beneath the skin. "Do you think she knows?"

Chuck inhaled in one long draught, then flicked the sweet scented butt towards the ocean and raised one expressive brow. "Really, Nathaniel? Of course she doesn't know. You haven't told her, I won't tell her, and the lovely Miss van der Woodsen is too busy cavorting on desks with boarding school professors and underneath them with co-eds. There is no doubt that she will never spill, so stop worrying." He ran one inkstained hand through his hair – inscribed with some townie's number, long washed away and no longer necessitated – and pulled his shirt over his head. "Are you coming?"

"I -" Nate's blue eyes were navy in the moonlight, and he stared longingly at the place where Chuck had thrown the spliff. "Do you think Carter's got any more of that? It was good."

"Ask him."

"Coming?"

Chuck considered. He looked out into the deep water, where Blair's ladies were already screeching and ducking and splashing in a way that indicated the possibility of a threesome on the horizon. Then, he looked further.

"No."

Nate shrugged. "Your loss."

_Yours_.

On reflection, Blair thought, she ought to have drunk more. She was firmly of the opinion that any decent buzz was two parts inebriation, one part enthusiasm and, despite several brightly coloured concoctions served up in highballs and flutes over the course of the evening, she was still not even vaguely tipsy. There was an ache in her gut she knew had nothing to do with hunger (well, perhaps a little) and her eyes were hard and black as she gazed at the blacker water, as its cool motions gripped her body and swayed her like the lover she had never had. She was in no mood to frolic like a five year old while Nate smoked himself into an oblivion starring guess who, not her; she was hardly in the mood even for corporal punishment tonight.

She sensed his presence before he spoke: ripples at her back, a phantom heat in the water. "Bass. Go away."

Chuck swam around her in a large circle, a shark with eyes as dark as Blair's. "You know, most women enjoy spontaneity."

"Go."

"Are you _still_ sulking?" His tone was incredulous, laced with the merest hint of mockery. "So he screwed your best friend, so what? I would see this as an opportunity to drop those iron panties of yours and show him who takes the lead in your relationship."

Blair smiled flatly. "But I'm not you."

"No." A few fluctuations of the current brought him a little closer to her, a little closer than was entirely comfortable. "No, you aren't."

She laid one hand on his chest and pushed. "Back off, Bass."

"Why?"

"Because you're naked!"

"You're naked too."

"Whatever; this wasn't my idea." Blair's hair swirled as she turned her back on him, crossing her arms over her chest and willing herself to shake with revulsion and cold. "Only filthy manwhores like you enjoy skinny dipping, especially on Cooper's Beach. God, can you imagine how many public school students have come here for day trips and _peed_?"

"Just so you know, urine is not one of my numerous turn ons."

"I wasn't – God, you're sick!" She slapped at his hand as it tugged on a tendril of her hair, snarled as all five fingers tangled in at the roots and pulled her head back. It rested on his shoulder in a virtual headlock, and Chuck stared quietly at the moon as if he had done nothing untoward.

After a few minutes of silent contemplation, he said, "You know, I can see right through you."

"Oh, can you?"

"Yes."

"Well, if you're so knowledgeable about me then you should know that I want you to get your greasy paws off my hair."

"Blair, you're so starved of everything – food included, by the way – that I could touch you anywhere and you'd just look at me in that hard, knowing way and tell me you can see right through me too." The tips of his fingers grazed the base of Blair's skull and she shuddered in one hard, abhorrent movement of acceptance. "The door is open, but you've still got the chain on."

"I didn't know hash made you so philosophical."

"I didn't know you wanted me so much."

"Oh, _enough_!" Blair pulled her head forward, gasped as several strands parted contact with her scalp and worked her arms in frantic circles, spinning dramatically to get in a well deserved slap or kick. Chuck however gazed calmly back at her, her hair held tight in his closed hand and rippling in the dark current.

"What do you want from me?" She asked, and once again regretted having not drunk more.

"I want you," he replied simply. "And tomorrow, when I'm sober, we'll pretend this conversation never happened, as we do every conversation that means something between us."

Kati Farkas lay on the beach, still glistening wet and singing at the top of her voice. She pulled a shirt from nearby on the sand and draped it over her face, laughing at the way it covered her like a tent and then, as the hallucinogenic properties of her mother's medicine cabinet began to wear thin, cried until her face was streaked with black eyeliner and sticky with tears.

Chuck and Blair just stared at each other, her hair still weaving its way through his fingers.

_Fin._


	20. Kiss Touch Bad Word

**_In case you didn't know, I - like many other multi-tasking authors - am also a poet and a singer. The song quoted is one of mine, inspired by Chair and called (like the title) 'Kiss Touch (Bad Word)', because I could never show it to my mother if it were 'Kiss Touch Word-That-Rhymes-With-Chuck', its original name.  
It may seem that I refer to the Ten Commandments in the wrong order, but as I was raised Catholic (though I'm not very spiritual now), I use the Catholic order of commandments, which is different to the Anglican or Jewish one. Also, this piece is set in Chuck's 'new man' stage in season four.  
Enjoy._**

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**Kiss Touch (Bad Word)**

_When you touch me, I burn_

She used to love it when he went down - all the way down - and not only because each _petit mort_ eclipsed the last with its supernova of enticing oblivion. No, she used to love it because he talked; said all the things she needed to hear, the things that made the un-Blair-like heat rush through her like dark sickness and ebony fire. Now she breaks the ninth commandment and covets, flouts the eighth and bears false witness and oh, tragedy! - grinds the first into the dust. She makes him her false idol, this new man in Chuck's skin, and when he smiles politely and takes her hand, she feels her skin char and the lust gnawing at the pit of her stomach like the hunger of the fiend who lives down there and plays poker with her wrecked morality.

Nowadays, she gets off on him barely touching her at all.

_When you kiss me, I hurt_

"Lily, how lovely to see you."

She's next in the receiving line, twelfth to congratulate him on his triumph. She already went to church today, already confessed, already said her prayers and made her peace with the devil he exorcised and she's now embracing. They tango in the wee small hours of the morning, that devil and her fingers and her scent in the air.

"Good evening, Blair."

"It seems that congratulations are in order."

He smiles in innocent appreciation,and she leans forward to kiss his cheek and corrupt. It's one long movement, the press of her lips to the line of his jaw a little further back than is appropriate and the brush of the translucent silk of her blouse and exotically encased breasts beneath against his shirtfront. She draws back and smiles the old Chuck's smile; the lazy, simple, bestial smile of seduction.

"The Empire looks beautiful. Remind me to get the name of your designer."

She walks away with a swing in her step at the dazed look on his face and a nod to the French whore for good measure.

_Don't you wanna_

"...not going to Blair's brunch?"

He focuses on the flames, watching her smile flicker between them and the dark eyes flash: glowing coals, setting sun. "I think it's best if I stay away from Blair for a while - just until the air clears."

Serena makes a sound of derision. "Just until you take a cold shower, you mean."

_Don't you wanna wanna_

He doesn't look up. "I no longer have those feelings for Blair, Serena."

Her eyes burn into him like laser beams so he's caught between blue flames and red. "If that were true, you wouldn't need to leave every time she visits, tell your girlfriend to change her perfume and throw out the _Tiffany's_ DVD."

"I hate George Peppard."

"Of course you do."

_Pull down the blinds and get a little flirty_

"This has to stop."

"What does, exactly?" She raises an eyebrow like a visual drawl, tucks one curl back into her coiffure and turns to admire one of Lily's new acquisitions adorning the wall. Her white neck is blatant, fragrant; ecstasy for a man blinded. He closes his eyes and counts to ten, and thinks of Eva's gentle smile and her 'you shouldn't have' at his latest gift.

Women like Blair expect gifts because they know they deserve them.

"These...these constant attempts of yours to turn me on!"

She glances back over her shoulder. "Oh, am I turning you on? Oopsie."

_Don't you wanna_

"I need a drink."

"But you never drink in the middle of the day!"

He stalks away from her, the air thick with a quiet rage. "I said that I _need_ a _drink_."

His phone lies abandoned on the table as the door slams shut behind him, and the sweet faced French girl lifts it delicately from the polished wood and eyes the screen with apprehensive curiosity.

_Don't you wanna wanna_

**Spotted: Blair Waldorf baring all on the Cote d'Azur. Because everyone does it in Europe, apparently...**

_Turn off the lights and get a dirty_

"What _exactly_ are you trying to do to me?"

"Who said that this has anything whatsoever to do with you?"

"I'm Chuck Bass."

"And Chuck Bass has a girlfriend."

_Don't you wanna_

She glides into his favourite watering hole just as it's about to close, and the bartender drops a glass when she tips him a wink and two hundred to keep the liquor coming. He eyes her darkly, and she smiles like a fallen seraph in search of her very own Satan. She drinks something red and fruity and out of character, her tongue tracing the rim for salt.

It almost happens.

Right there.

Right then.

_Don't you uh-oh_

"Don't do this."

"Oh, Charles." That tongue curls around his full name as her fingers curl around his thigh.

_Don't you wanna_

Blair is laden down with packages when she opens the door - hat box from Bendels, three (and a half) bags from Barneys, two from Bloomingdales and, most important of all, the tiniest robin's egg blue one; a present to herself from her personal interpretation of Heaven. It's a struggle to open the door, and she silently curses Dorota's set breastfeeding hours as her elbow scrapes the frame and she wobbles inside, only to be seized by unseen hands and pinned to the wall, wrists clamped behind her back, head pulled back and mouth plundered. When Blair opens her eyes (as if such a thing were necessary), the pair that meets hers is frenzied, hot, and black with determination.

"Chuck."

"Not a word."

_Don't you uh-oh_

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my - _Chuck_!"

"Only that."

_Don't you wanna (oh) with me?_

"Love me?"

"Always."

_Fin._


	21. You Have Every Right To Fall

**_Chuck has lost everything so many times over, and sometimes we judge what we could never possibly understand. Blair however, sees everything - in shades of white, red, and black.  
Enjoy.  
_**

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**You Have Every Right To Fall**

In your short life, you have seen too much; done too much. You have become a man two hundred times over, and yet no one believes. You have walked in the footsteps of a giant, and yet you yourself cannot bear to leave imprints and marr the perfection of his passing. You have lived the life of a slave, and of a master. You are a slave to the mastery of your own imagination.

What are you? Undefinable. Oil, paper, flame. You burn bright like a candle in the dark and singe moths with your heat. You take the sweetness of youth, its innocence and white chastity, and then you smear it cerise red and crimson red with blood until there stands a sacrifice and testament to you, the Almighty. May we all sing hallelujahs to your glory for all eternity, and turn our faces away so as never to be scalded. Forgive us the sins we commit in the following you, in the walking in your ways. Forgive us for eating you, drinking you, breathing you in like smoke to turn our lungs black and our skin to chalk with the pall of death. You are death: its beauty, and its allure.

And yet in your short life, you have laboured - never done a day's work without some motive behind it, but laboured. Learned to better yourself, to better a chance at...something. Something? Something only you know, somewhere I could not go, a place closed and closeted to me and perfect for me to lay my head and hear your heartbeat singing beneath.

Lying beneath your skin.

Sometimes, you crash. Plane from the sky, orgasm to aftershock. You crash down into a glass, down onto a line, down into and onto a pair of sweaty, gasping legs with no face and a tongue like a leper. Sometimes, you long for the blade at your throat and the gun to your head, the bitter taste behind the liquor which signifies the end. Sometimes you seek the river, the drop, the empty sky promising freedom, birdsong, ecstasy beyond any tiny pill and a face to burn away the darkness behind your eyes. You remember that look of hers, sometimes. You remember it, and then you see it on my face and let me hurt you and heal you in equal measure.

So you have every right to fall. Fall on me. Fall beside me. Fall in me. Fall around me. Fall where I can reach out one hand and connect, hold you like a compass needle quivering, quivering, seeking a north and a guiding star burning as blackly and as bleakly as your own. Fire, powder; kiss and consume. Fall with me. Fall within me.

Drown.

_Fin._


	22. Animal

**_Blair, Blair, Blair - you should know by now not to lie to your acolytes. Considering that many of us know you and your wardrobe better than we know our own dear friends, even your lipstick choice can convey 'shifty' to our well trained eyes (NB: B's last foray into true red was when she tried to seduce Chuck at Nate's family reunion, and look how that turned out). So no, ma cherie, you may be over Chuck, but you most certainly are still in love with him (although the shoe handover with Louis was utterly darling, and I was hoping Chuck had a sword hidden in that cane so they could duel__).  
Snaps to Eva for getting that Blair owns her skinny blonde ass.  
The GG writers totally pulled their socks up this episode, and season four is shaping up to be a ride like no other.  
Enjoy._**

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**Animal**

Of course he would pick the perfect ring, because he knew her: knew the perfect cut, the perfect clarity, the undeniable perfection of _that_ ring for _this_ girl. And Louis, sweet though the gesture may have been, had sent her to choose what she wanted because he himself had no idea. Someone else had chosen the dresses, the darling couture, when before she would have found a garment bag hanging on her closet door with no note and not a word as to where it had come from (though there was never any question). He didn't need a scrapbook to navigate her life, could cut through her crap like a razor blade in less than a heartbeat. He didn't need Manet or the Seine or cheap kebabs or double dates with decoy drivers, because he knew; he knew her better than himself, after all.

And she could walk away from him in the end, walk away from the shattered remains of somebody's somebody - _her_ somebody - with a smooth veil of calm gilding her features. She could walk past the blonde hovering timidly at Serena's elbow with her head held high and ready for the crown for the simple reason that she was Blair Waldorf, and she had grown a little more with every step she took; grown a little more in the knowledge that she had put him back together, like always, the glue for the priceless pieces she and he and the world had smashed.

But the truth - oh, the truth, sometimes worse than the lies - rang in her ears. _It wouldn't be my world without you in it. _They had forged a world of secrets and lies all those years ago to show their faces as hollow, serenely arrogant creatures of privilege and their bare backs as raw, passionate beings who felt and who lived as deeply as any lover who opened their veins or sank to the depths for the emptiness that love inevitably brings. The mask can be remade and the wounds can heal, but the scars...in the end, the scars run so deep that there can be no covering them, not with all the silk and diamonds a prince could provide and not with all the beauty and money and power in the world. The scars _are _the truth; they are their truth, the words that no one dares speak out loud.

Blair may have slipped and brought herself back up, but deep down she's still an animal.

_Fin._


	23. The Burning Sea

**The Burning Sea**

'_You come beating like moth's wings_  
_Spastic and violently_  
_Whipping me into a storm_  
_Shaking me down to the core_.'  
- Moth's Wings, Passion Pit.

"I need a Zofran."

No, you don't: you want ipecac or a toothbrush, mustard water or your pretty painted fingers. You want the immediate numbness, the satisfaction that comes with being utterly, completely empty; cleansed. You feel dirty. You feel full of rage, and pain, and darkness.

So you do it.

Good bad girl.

Ordinary girl, so empty and full on her own hate to the brim, bubbling over.

You don't know how much is too much because you're out of practice. You had other things to keep you together, other things to have and to hit and to hold onto when the tigers came at night; each voice is now louder than thunder. Every word shakes the room, each repeated word from between your lips or his or hers (like _yousaidhesaidshesaid_), lies and truths spilling over and whispering to the lost of how lost you truly are, how very deep beneath the waves you've sunk this time.

Again.

Again.

And that coolness beneath your flesh.

Strange, the pad of his thumb sweeps over the hot, blood flushed skin still exposed to the air - gently - a bite and a lick of fire on flame. How, and when, and why - better not to think but to thank, eyes closing gratefully at the welcome presence of vitality and virulence like a hawk guarding a sparrow. You remember a day when the roles were reversed, when you fought off his demons with your bare hands; you won once. You lost...but you don't lose.

You never give up.

Dry leaves are drifting, fireworks exploding, eyes high and dry by the time you are moved, ice-laced tile to still night air and then to softness, yielding, heartbeat beneath your bare cheek in the arc of midnight.

"You're beautiful."

Maybe he says it.

Maybe he doesn't.

"Don't go."

"I won't."

"Please."

"I promise."

You're dimly aware of how hard this must be for him, forcing himself to save your tattered soul when he hates you so very much. For a moment, though (and it's a long moment in which you sleep, and dream, and _breathe_ as if you're almost alive instead of just faking it), you feel moth's wings settle on your cheeks, and your forehead, and your hair -

So strange, the firebursts they make.

_Fin._


	24. Love You More

**Love You More**

She has a bizarre predilection for breathing him in: like right now, when her nose is nestled between the swoop which parts two ribs and he swears she's trying to inhale the heartbeat right out of him. His way of looking down at her is skeptical, aroused, amused - _Iloveyou_ but _I_'_ddoyou_ with a slight hint of _you_'_llbeaththedeathandheartofme_.

"You don't love me enough."

"Why?"

"Because if you really loved me, you would've stayed away."

She's only half teasing, wants him to justify it; this. This morning's pillow lips are bare and pink, looking for an answer as she wriggles and stretches, pressing them to his shoulder.

Maybe she's right. Maybe darkness wouldn't have followed her life as it follows his if he had pushed her back, pushed her away, lost her friendship instead of his heart. Maybe he would've hidden in the shadows of her life like a wraith and made it beautiful, made a snow globe of her existence with an ice princess at its centre and diamonds of light falling all around. But then, maybe she would have sought him out: for a touch. For a taste. To slip into something a little more unexpected.

"I love you," he says instead. "That doesn't mean I'm not selfish."

_Fin._


	25. I Remember

_**My heart broke a little watching this week's episode, both because it was insanely good and because, by the end of it, I felt that Chuck, Blair and even Jenny had grown about a foot taller morally. And Love The Way You Lie? Have Josh Schwartz & Co. been reading my rants on how that song was written about Chair? Anyway, a classic C/B moment - one for the ages, in my opinion - and so I thought I should end this particular series of vignettes in a way which expresses that.  
On a side note, does Juliet know EVERYONE? Pretty soon she'll be in cahoots with Lily and Rufus.  
Enjoy.**_

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**I Remember**

I remember a day - a night - when I didn't fear the morning. I remember when I rose up, smiled like I believed and danced with the devil because he would never be coming to collect. I remember eyes in the darkness, the flash burn of eyes on my skin; I remember. I remember a fiery baptism of white light and glory. I remember an ache, unfamiliar, a soothing still sweeter than the promise of new truth. I remember the first of all the first times, the domino tipped into the chain; I remember.

I remember the blow - harder than I'd ever before sustained - that I thought would fell me. I remember realising that it hadn't, that this blow was one in a series to teach me who we were: indestructible. I remember rising from the bottom and clawing my way back to the top; I remember.

I remember the days - long, hazy, lazy days - when my heart felt swollen and I didn't know why. I remember drowning it in alcohol and kisses that were half-formed, blown rose petals with no flower to fall from. I remember one, and then another, and then another: blue eyes and brown hair in one after another after another; I remember. I remember the promise of royalty, the promise of security, the promise of danger. I remember hatred for words neither of us could say, and hatred against love for holding me in its grip; I remember.

I remember light - perfect, glorious sunshine - when moments were dreams, ridiculous dreams that no one had to tell me to believe in. I remember eyes open wide when the pain was gone, blessed relief. I remember certainty, and promises; I remember.

I remember the blow that broke my back.

I remember the blow that ought to have killed me.

And I know this moment is empty, hanging in the air like a cobweb spinning as I reach out my hand with no thought to the consequences. There's that flash burn again when it seems as if this is the catalyst for every part of me, and with it that sudden impetus to remember, to forget the world and just remember...everything.

I remember when we were sixteen years old and he used to look at me like that.

_Fin._


End file.
